The ebook version [Microsoft Reader] of OURTOPIA (by Garrett Jones, 2004) can now be obtained FREE simply by emailing your request to:
gar_jon@talktalk.net [i.e. "gar_jon"]
October has been another traumatic month with country after country falling into recession. Millions of people across the globe are victims of the rocketing house prices leading to the mortgage debacle which has brought banks down, deprived people of their homes and their jobs and almost frozen the global economy. We can only hope that, during the painful months which follow, a far more honest and socially responsible financial structure will emerge.
Incidentally, here is something I wrote in Ourtopia back in 2004:
"However convenient the invention of money has been, it has given rise to some grave injustices. ..... The main problem about this is that money attracts money and, allowing for the occasional slump, the rich get steadily richer whilst the gap between rich and poor gets steadily wider. The other big problem is that unscrupulous lenders encourage borrowing they know can never be repaid." [pp28-29]
How many times have you heard it said of the financial crisis: "global problems require global solutions"? How long will it take for us to realise that real global solutions can only be found when there are global structures in place capable of imposing global order? And of course this does not only apply to finance and economics.
If we worry about the amount of public money which has to be spent to repair the current economic damage, how worried are we about the enormous sum of money which is spent globally on "defence"? This money will either fund obsolescent arms and idle soldiers or it will add to the already horrendous toll of inter-human carnage. Certainly we want to feel safe, but who is "we"? Is it just "us" - our nation - or is it every single person on the planet?
If you want to play an active role in bringing about a true world order, I recommend a visit to the site below, where you have an opportunity to place your vote and learn a great deal about the urgent need for everybody to get into battle gear NOW:
http://www.voteworldgovernment.org
Another site you will find helpful and thought-provoking is:
http://www.integralworldgovernment.org
But the top priority has to be the stopping of the lunatic destruction of life, limb, loved ones, land and resources which is war. We cannot wait for the setting up of a world government. Stopping war is something which can happen quite simply just as soon as enough of us decide it has to happen:
NOT WAR
[1] We must campaign to press the main players at the Security Council to call an immediate halt to all arms production with immediate effect. In order for this to be effective, a global structure has to be set up with the power to enforce international law as impartially, as vigorously and as universally as we expect national laws to be enforced within the state. Since this would deprive national politicians of their armies, we cannot expect much enthusiasm from them for such a radical clipping of their wings. The pressure for it to happen has to come from below.
[2] All those currently kept in work by their country’s 'defence' contracts must have their salaries and pensions guaranteed by their governments until they can be employed in the non-death-dealing sectors of their economies.
[3] All private manufacture and trading in armaments must cease immediately and all existing weapons, whether publicly or privately owned, must be surrendered to the Global Enforcement Agency [GEA] - or some such body - empowered to secure global peace and monitor human rights.*
[4] All GEA personnel will be bound by a strict code of conduct which outlaws any abuse of its power, i.e. any attempt to act in ways contrary to or not definable by its mission, which will be to safeguard the human rights of all people everywhere, pre-eminently the right to life and to freedom within the law. Training academies will be set up by the GEA across the globe as speedily as practicable to ensure that all personnel are trained to the highest standards.
[5] If these proposals seem like crying for the moon, this is only because we, as a race, have given our tribalism such an intolerably long innings that anything different seems now to be almost unthinkable. The important question is not: can these things happen? Rather, it is: do we really and truly want them to happen? If not, why not? Remember, where there is a will, there has to be a way
*
The total inadequacy of the status quo is demonstrated by the following quote from the International Herald Tribune in the "UN Wire", 23 July, 2008: Le Roy to assume difficult UN chief peacekeeper postAnd now (October 2, 2008) UN wire sends me this:
Ban warns attacks against UN rising worldwide
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern Wednesday that UN
staff are being directly targeted for attack by extremists and armed groups at a
rate never seen before. Ban said security for humanitarian and UN personnel
around the world is deteriorating under a "wide scale of threats."
The Washington Times/The Associated Press (10/1)
----
To put the above in historical perspective here is what the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote in 1796. Here are some passages from his "Project for a Perpetual Peace":
".....to pay men to kill or to be killed seems to entail using them as mere machines and tools in the hand of another (the state)......
...each state places its majesty (for it is absurd to speak of the majesty of the people) in being subject to no external juridical restraint, and the splendour of its sovereign consists in the fact that many thousands stand at his command to sacrifice themselves for something that does not concern them and without his needing to place himself in the least danger. The chief difference between European and American savages lies in the fact that many tribes of the latter have been eaten by their enemies, while the former know how to make better use of their conquered enemies than to dine off them; they know better how to use them to increase the number of their subjects and thus the quantity of instruments for even more extensive wars. ...
...States do not plead their cause before a tribunal; war alone is their way of bringing suit. But by war and its favourable issue, in victory, right is not decided, and though by a treaty of peace this particular war is brought to an end, the state of war, of always finding a new pretext to hostilities, is not terminated.......
.…[states] already have an internal juridical constitution and have thus outgrown compulsion from others to submit to a more extended lawful constitution according to their ideas of right. This is true in spite of the fact that reason, from its throne of supreme moral legislating authority, absolutely condemns war as a legal recourse and makes a state of peace a direct duty, even though peace cannot be established or secured except by a compact among nations. ...
... The concept of a law of nations as a right to make war does not really mean anything, because it is then a law of deciding what is right by unilateral maxims through force and not by universally valid public laws which restrict the freedom of each one. ...
... America, the lands inhabited by the Negro, the Spice Islands, the Cape, etc., were at the time of their discovery considered by these civilized intruders as lands without owners, for they counted the inhabitants as nothing. In East India (Hindustan), under the pretence of establishing economic undertakings, they brought in foreign soldiers and used them to oppress the natives, excited widespread wars among the various states, spread famine, rebellion, perfidy, and the whole litany of evils which afflict mankind. ...
... It would not ill become a people that has just terminated a war to decree, besides a day of thanksgiving, a day of fasting in order to ask heaven, in the name of the state, for forgiveness for the great iniquity which the human race still goes on to perpetuate in refusing to submit to a lawful constitution in their relation to other peoples, preferring, from pride in their independence, to make use of the barbarous means of war even though they are not able to attain what is sought, namely, the rights of a single state. The thanksgiving for victory won during the war, the hymns which are sung to the God of Hosts (in good Israelitic manner), stand in equally sharp contrast to the moral idea of the Father of Men. For they not only show a sad enough indifference to the way in which nations seek their rights, but in addition express a joy in having annihilated a multitude of men or their happiness."